Sunday, June 30, 2013

I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex an area as glutted with churches as it is with endless shopping malls.

I'm
generally of the opinion that we have about 50% too many of both and
would be far better off with more public schools and parks, even green
fields with cattle, sheep, goats, alpacas and llamas grazing would be
better.

I have to confess. I don't get religion.

The same way I don't get crystal/aroma therapy along with a bunch of New Age quackery.

Religion
has always struck me as sort of like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny
for adults. Not just the big time desert religions but Buddhism
and all the rest.

Salvation and or eternal punishment have always seemed to be akin to parental threats of punishment when daddy gets home.

Who do you fucking think you are kidding with that one?

I think therefore I do not blindly believe, especially when believing requires me to deny physical evidence to the contrary.

I
was told I needed to read the Bible as it was the word of God ™. I
read it and it seemed a mishmash of ancient mythology. Gods, demons,
floods and a creation myth clearly at odds with the scientific one.
Science had evidence. The desert religion had a myth no more believable
than the ones of the ancient Greeks or for that matter Shinto.

One
does not need a Ph.D. in Marxist analysis of the class structure to
note that one of the main purposes of religion is to keep the masses
subservient and submissive to those in power.

Nor does one have to
be a radical feminist to notice how all religions seem to have as part
of their core ideology the inferiority of women, how they all seem to be
geared to support male supremacy.

By the time I was fourteen I had some pretty serious doubts about the whole God™ and the church/religion thing.

I saw it as something unreal, like how ghost stories are used to scare kids who are too dumb and too naive to know any better.

Then I discovered to my amazement how many adult people actually believed all sorts of bizarre stuff.Like vaccines causing autism. Or Feng Shui. Crystal Therapy, aroma therapy, hugging gurus touting mysteries of the east.Television preachers pushing heavy metal imagery straight out of Dante or the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.

Fantastic
tales filled with apocalyptic visions of dystopian futures that would
occur because some magic invisible guy in the sky. Some magic invisible
guy who was all powerful yet permitted Hitler. A cosmic joker like the
Norse god Loki who tricked people with talking serpents, fruit from the
tree of knowledge and burning bushes.The
more I heard the more absurd it all sounded and eventually I came to
believe that only ignorant people could really believe this crap.I
also came to believe those who peddled this crap were cynical
manipulators who were using religion as both a con game and a power
trip.Lately I have come to view religion
as a source of hatred of women and LGBT people. I see gay friendly
churches as being con artists milking LGBT people the same way the Rick
Warrens of the world milk the homophobic bigots.In high school, many years ago Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle used to be on recommended reading lists, but other books by him, including Profits of Religion were never mentioned much less given a place on lists of books we should read.To make a long story short I stopped believing in God™ when I was fifteen or sixteen.Being
skeptical kept me out of the clutches of a lot of mind fuckers over the
years including gurus, Scientology, EST, the Wicca and others too
numerous to mention.Fifty years later I am
still amazed at how many people fall for the cons put forth in the name
of some magic invisible guy in the sky.More
and more I see the truly evil side of religion. The woman hating, the
hatred of people who are born different be they gay, lesbian, bisexual
or trans*.I see religion used to stir
hatred and the apologists making excuses for terrorism committed in the
name of God™. Of course on "real_____" would ever engage in
genocide.(Hitler and the European genocide of Native Peoples in the
Americas come to mind) Islam is the "religion of peace" except when
suicide bombers commit terrorist acts of murder in the name of Allah.
Buddhism is the religion of peace too except when they clash with
Muslims.

Perhaps the world would be better off without all this God™ crap and more stress on ethical behavior rooted in secular humanism.Science
offers more in the way of verifiable theories regarding the evolution
of humanity and our place in the universe than all the religions put
together do.Through out our history
ethical advances towards a more human society have been the product of
men and women who have put forth ideas aimed at ending injustice and
promoting humanist values.

Who is planting anti-Snowden attacks with Buzzfeed, and why is the website playing along?

Since journalist Glenn Greenwald revealed the existence of the
National Security Agency’s PRISM domestic surveillance program, he and
his source, the whistleblower Edward Snowden, have come in for a series
of ugly attacks. On June 26, the day that the New York Daily News published a straightforward smear piece on Greenwald, the website Buzzfeed rolled out a remarkably similar article, a lengthy profile that focused on Greenwald’s personal life and supposed eccentricities.

Both outlets attempted to make hay out of Greenwald’s involvement
over a decade ago on the business end of a porn distribution company, an
arcane detail that had little, if any, bearing on the domestic spying
scandal he sparked. The coordinated nature of the smears prompted
Reuters media columnist Jack Shafer to ask if an opposition research firm was behind them. “I wonder who commissioned the file,” he mused on Twitter.

A day before the Greenwald attacks appeared, Buzzfeed published an anonymously sourced story about the government of Ecuador, which had reportedly offered asylum to Snowden (Ecuador has just revoked a temporary travel document issued
to Snowden). Written by Rosie Gray and Adrian Carasquillo, the article
relied on documents marked as “secret” that were passed to Buzzfeed
by sources described as “activists who wished to call attention to the
[Ecuadorian] government’s spying practices in the context of its new
international role” as the possible future sanctuary of Snowden.

Gray and Carasquillo reported that Ecuador’s intelligence service had
attempted to procure surveillance technology from two Israeli firms.
Without firm proof that the system was ever put into use, the authors
claimed the documents “suggest a commitment to domestic surveillance
that rivals the practices by the United States’ National Security
Agency.” ( Buzzfeed has never published a critical report on
the $3 billion in aid the US provides to Israel each year, which is used
to buy equipment explicitly designed for repressing, spying on and
killing occupied Palestinians).

Buzzfeed’s Ecuador expose supported a theme increasingly advanced
by Snowden’s critics -- that the hero of civil libertarians and
government transparency activists was, in fact, a self-interested
hypocrite content to seek sanctuary from undemocratic regimes.
Curiously, those who seized on the story had no problem with Buzzfeed’s
reporters relying on leaked government documents marked as classified.
For some Snowden detractors, the issue was apparently not his leaking,
but which government his leaks embarrassed.

Melissa
M. of Stinson Beach, California, talked about her father-in-law, 60
years old, working for low wages six or seven days each week for 40
years as a manager of a nearby cattle ranch. “The one thing that keeps
him going is the letter he gets from the Social Security
Administration,” she said. It “tells him how much he has earned in
Social Security.”

Allen J. of Portland, Oregon, remarked that he
was “a liver transplant survivor because of Medicare.” Martin L. of
Cortland, New York, said he was born with a heart defect that required
open-heart surgery to replace it. Without Medicare, Martin writes, he
“would have no life and no future.”

Alton S. of Lakeland, Florida,
was planting a citrus tree when he felt a pain in his lower abdomen.
That night, an emergency room doctor told him he had a ruptured
diverticulum. Alton remembers overhearing someone say, “We better get
this guy to surgery or he’s dead meat.” A combination of his private
insurance and Medicare paid for a series of successful surgeries.
Looking back, Alton believes Medicare is one of the most “humane and
caring arms of our government.”

With a 33-year career as a nurse,
Janet P. of Cotati, California, noted that she worked to keep her
“clients stable enough to stay out of the hospital.” Every time Medicare
or Social Security policy changes, her clients’ lives are affected.
Even as she hustles for others, Janet is aware that she needs to think
about her own future.

“My savings was in my house, but I lost
that,” she said. “I’m older now…getting back that nest egg gets harder
and harder, and I’m not confident that either Social Security or
Medicare will be there for me when I’m not able to work full-time.”

These
are Melissa, Allen, Martin, Alton, and Janet’s stories. Like millions
of their neighbors, Social Security and Medicare keep them going,
offering them a humane and caring future.

Congress must take sound
action to ensure that the promise of both these programs remains fully
funded for coming generations. If our elected officials do nothing,
after 2026, the government will be able to pay approximately 87 percent
of projected Medicare costs and, after 2033, roughly 75 percent of
anticipated Social Security benefits.

The trustees offer us a
sobering reminder, not a crazed alarm as some fear. Luckily there are
many smart actions Congress can take in response, starting with raising
the payroll tax cap and fully implementing the Affordable Care Act.
These actions are within our reach and would have a dramatic and
positive impact on the well-being of both programs.

Our elected officials need to hear from all of us today. It’s our budget and our future. Let’s weigh in.

No, things have not gone well for those wishing to ax Social Security
and Medicare, but they are not about to give up. And with the money and
access to the media they enjoy, why should they?

Hence we have Jon Cowan and Jim Kessler from Third Way giving the Washington Post's house view in a column
headlined, "the left needs to get real on Medicare, Social Security and
the deficit." The proximate cause for Cowan and Kessler's ire is a
column by Neera Tanden and Michael Linden from the Center for American
Progress which argued that we should focus on fixing the economy's
current problems by improving infrastructure and creating jobs.

To their great credit, Tanden and Linden reversed their earlier
concern with deficit reduction based on the evidence. The deficit has
shrunk by more than had been projected and the downturn has been longer
and deeper than they had expected. Faced with new facts, Tanden and
Linden proposed different policies. This makes deficit dead-enders like
Cowan and Kessler very unhappy. Let's see what they have to say.

Actually their main trick is pretty simple and right up front. They
use the old whack them with a really big number trick. Cowan and Kessler
tell us that in 2030 we are projected to have a deficit of $1.6
trillion. Got that, $1.6 TRILLION!!!!!! Yeah, that is lots of money and
we're supposed to be really really scared.Anyone know how big the economy will be in 2030? The Congressional
Budget Office (CBO) projects that it will be just about $35 trillion.
This means that this very scary $1.6 trillion projected deficit will be
slightly less than 4.6 percent of GDP.

Is this too big? It is probably larger than the deficit that we will
want to be running 17 years from now, but it is not exactly a disastrous
deficit. We ran deficits that were larger in every year from 1983 to
1986. We were also higher at 4.7 percent of GDP in 1992. Those deficits
did not wreck the economy, even if they were arguably larger than would
be desired.

The decades-long effort to privatize public services and assets is
hitting some bumps, with state and local governments reconsidering
whether for-profit companies should be allowed to indiscriminately
profit off of taxpayer dollars with limited accountability.

In New Jersey, legislation to ensure that public services won't be
privatized unless it will result in actual savings for taxpayers has
passed both chambers of the legislature. In Texas, a bipartisan
coalition is fighting against a private prison in Montgomery County, and
Kentucky is rejecting private prisons altogether. And in Fresno,
California, voters rejected a proposal backed by the city's popular
mayor to privatize trash collection services.

“The fact is, when taxpayers see what they lose by handing over
control of their roads, prisons and other services, they don’t want
anything to do with outsourcing," says Donald Cohen, chair of In The
Public Interest, a resource center on privatization. "We hope that what
we’re seeing in places like New Jersey, Texas, Kentucky and Fresno is
part of a trend to restore control of services to American taxpayers.”

New Jersey Could Curb Privatization Abuses

The New Jersey bill, if signed by Governor Chris Christie, might be
the first of its kind in the nation. The legislation would prohibit
privatization contracts that achieve "cost savings" by cutting services
or raising rates, and also require that the company provide its workers
comparable wages and benefits. This would thwart efforts by corporate
interests to provide the veneer of cost savings by replacing
middle-class public employees with low-wage workers.

The bill would also require for-profit corporations to actually stand
by their promises: their performance would be subject to audit, which
could lead to penalties or the loss of a contract if they fail to
produce the promised cost savings.

Not surprisingly, the bill is opposed by groups like the Chamber of
Commerce, who will likely urge Christie to veto it. And Gov. Christie is
no stranger to privatization: at the same time the bill was moving
through the legislature, Gov. Christie entered a contract to privatize
the state's lottery system. Whether he will sign this latest bill to
guarantee accountability for privatizers remains to be seen.

Andrea GermanosPublished on Friday, June 28, 2013 by Common DreamsFrances Moore Lappé and Vandana Shiva, noted figures in the food
sovereignty movement, added their voices to the chorus blasting the 2013
World Food Prize going to GMO scientists with the biotechnology giants
Monsanto and Syngenta.

The
GMO scientists' work contributes to hunger and ecological devastation
while not advancing nutrition, said the two Right Livelihood Laureates,
also Councillors on the World Future Council, and noted the irony of
Monsanto being awarded at a time of rising worldwide opposition to the seed giant.

Lappé and Shiva's remarks echo those of the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance, which stated
that the prize going to the biotech giants “sends precisely the wrong
message about sustainable solutions to hunger and poverty.”

"Never mind that Monsanto is a sponsor of the prize (and that the list of other backers reads like a who’s who of big ag and big food), or that we never get to know the names of either the nominees or the nominators," New York Times' Mark Bittman noted.

Still, the GMO work by the winning scientists "betrays the mandate of
the very World Food Prize," explains Lappé, "which is all about focus
on the importance of nutritious food and food for all, whereas GMO
seeds, their design and the way they are spread to the world has nothing
to do with better nutrition."

"In fact, to take advantage of these seeds, small farmers who are
among the hungriest people in the world, have to take out loans to buy
the costly products that are required—the seeds, the fertilizers... and
the pesticides that are required" for the GMO seeds.

"So in fact the honorees ... are actually contributing the problems
that keep us locked... in hundreds of millions of people in a world
where there is plenty of food," concluded Lappe.

Two hundred people were treated for heat problems at a concert in Las Vegas as temperatures soar in California and Nevada

Dan
Kail was vacationing in Las Vegas when he heard that the temperature at
Death Valley could approach 130F (54C) this weekend. He didn't hesitate
to make a trip to the desert location that is typically the hottest
place on the planet.

"Coming to Death Valley in the summertime has
always been on the top of my bucket list," the 67-year-old Pittsburgh
man said. "When I found out it might set a record I rented a car and
drove straight over. If it goes above 130F I will have something to brag
about."

The forecast called for Death Valley to reach 128F
Saturday as part of a heat wave that has caused large parts of the
western US to suffer. Death Valley's record high of 134F, set a century
ago, stands as the highest temperature ever recorded on earth.

"The wind out here is like being in front of a blast furnace," Kail said.

As
temperatures soared in Las Vegas on Friday, 200 people were treated for
heat problems at an outdoor concert, Clark County spokesman Erik Pappa
said.

Thirty of them were hospitalized for heat-related injuries at Vans Warped Tour at Silverton Casino as temps reached 115F.Most of the others "were essentially provided shade and water and a place to sit down," Pappa said.It was expected to get even hotter in Las Vegas over the weekend.

Phoenix
reached 116F on Friday — 2F short of the expected high — in part
because a light layer of smoke from wildfires in neighboring New Mexico
shielded the blazing sun, the National Weather Service said. Phoenix was
forecast to hit nearly 120. The record in Phoenix is 122.

Saturday, June 29, 2013

June 26, 2013 will go down in history. The Supreme Court decisions
on same-sex marriage have given those couples, who live in states which
approved gay marriage, full citizenship under the constitution.

The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which had denied federal
benefits to gay couples, is dead. It was signed by President Bill
Clinton in 1996. What a different time it was. No state had approved
gay marriage. Men and women who openly declared their sexual
preferences did so at great risk. Vermont was not to adopt its Civil
Unions until the year two thousand. The controversy that followed
caused the defeat of half a dozen legislators in the next election.

With the court's decision on California's Proposition 8, 13 states
will have sanctioned same-sex marriage -- that amounts to thirty percent
of the population. The latest polls show 55 percent of Americans
approve of same-sex marriage; 44 percent oppose.

What is so stunning about the decision is that is was made by a
conservative sharply divided court -- five to four in each case, but not
the same coalition. Supreme Court Justices, it appears, also have gay
friends and family members.

The majority opinion n DOMA, written by Justice Kennedy stated that
DOMA violates the equal protection clause, an argument similar to one
made by the Vermont Supreme Court in 1999.

What do these combined decisions mean to Americans? The opponents
will not give up and it is their right to continue to uphold their
beliefs. But the assumption that same-sex married couples destroy
heterosexual marriages has been denied. The court found no evidence for
that claim.

The belief that same-sex couples have the civil right to be protected
by the constitution has been affirmed.

These landmark decisions have an
impact far beyond the rights of married couples. It tells all gay and
lesbian men and women, and their children that they have a legitimate
place in society. They do not have to hide, as they once did in deep
dark closets. Yes, 37 states have passed laws which prohibit same-sex
marriage. Some will continue to do so, regardless of the court's
decisions.

The
dramatic events of Tuesday night brought to the surface tensions that
had been building for years – in an increasingly diverse Texas where
white Republican men still call the shots

The moment was years in the making. It was 11.45pm Tuesday night, and the Texas Senate was poised to enact perhaps the most restrictive anti-abortion bill in the United States.
State senator Wendy Davis had filibustered the bill for 11 hours in a
remarkable attempt to run out a 30-day special legislative session.

Hundreds
of thousands of people across the country began to follow Davis's
dramatic filibuster on an internet livestream. They saw Republicans use procedural technicalities to cut her off, and with just 15 minutes left before a midnight deadline, Democrats finally seemed out of maneuvers.

Then
state senator Leticia Van de Putte, a Democrat from San Antonio who had
rushed back to the Texas Capitol from her father's funeral, asked to be
recognized to speak. The Republican presiding officer at first ignored
her. When she was finally given the floor for an inquiry, Van de Putte
asked: "At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice
to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?"

The
orange-clad abortion-rights supporters packed in the gallery burst into
cheers. Their shouts grew louder and louder until they drowned out the
final minutes of the session, preventing Republicans from passing the
bill. No one in the Texas legislature had ever seen anything like it.

The
day's dramatic events that captivated people across the country – the
11-hour filibuster, the dramatic fight over arcane Senate rules, and the
decisive 15 minutes of ear-splitting whooping and hollering from the
gallery – were the result of political tensions building in Texas for
years.

There's a saying: "Texas is paradise for men and dogs, but
hell for women and horses." That's a little outdated and not completely
accurate: in fact, horses are treated pretty well here. Women in Texas
have had a difficult time.

For two decades, since Ann Richards was
governor, Texas politics has been dominated by a small group of mostly
Anglo-Republican men, elected by a few hundred thousand GOP primary
voters.

Despite a facade of openness, the president has sought to crack down on “inconvenient” reporting.

Out of all the harrowing storylines in journalist Jeremy Scahill's new film Dirty Wars, the one about Abdulelah Haider Shaye best spotlights the U.S. government's new assault against press freedom.
Shaye is the Yemeni journalist who in 2009 exposed his government's
coverup of a U.S. missile strike that, according to McClatchy’s
newswire, ended up killing “dozens of civilians, including 14 women and 21 children.”
McClatchy notes that for the supposed crime of committing journalism,
Shaye was sentenced to five years in prison following a trial that “was
widely condemned as a sham” by watchdog groups and experts who noted
that the prosecution did not “offer any substantive evidence to support
[its] charges.” What, you might ask, does this have to do with the American
government's attitude toward press freedom? That's where Scahill's movie
comes in. As the film shows, when international pressure moved the
Yemeni government to finally consider pardoning Shaye, President Obama
personally intervened, using a phone call with Yemen's leader to halt
the journalist's release.

Had this been an isolated incident, it might be easy to write off. But
the president's move to criminalize the reporting of inconvenient facts
is sadly emblematic of his administration's larger war against
journalism. And, mind you, the word “war” is no overstatement.

As New York Times media correspondent David Carr put it:
“If you add up the pulling of news organization phone records
(The Associated Press), the tracking of individual reporters (Fox News),
and the effort by the current administration to go after sources (seven
instances and counting in which a government official has been
criminally charged with leaking classified information to the news
media), suggesting that there is a war on the press is less hyperbole
than simple math.”

In this unprecedented global war, President Obama has been backed by
the combined power of Justice Department prosecutors, FBI surveillance
agents, State Department diplomats and, perhaps most troubling of all, a
cadre of high-profile Benedict Arnolds within the media itself. Continue reading at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15207/obamas_dirty_war_on_journalism/

Certainly Edward Snowden’s crime is one of public relations. In this
day and age, power ain’t just jackboots, tanks and missiles. What he did
by outing the NSA and its gargantuan surveillance operation was mess
hugely with the American image — the American brand — with its
irresistible combination of might and right.

That’s the nature of his “treason.” The secret he gave away was
pretty much the same one the little boy blurted out in Hans Christian
Andersen’s tale: “The emperor has no clothes!” That is, the government’s
security industry isn’t devoted, with benevolent righteousness, to
protecting the American public. Instead, it’s obsessively irrational,
bent on accumulating data on every phone call we make. It’s a berserk
spy machine, seemingly to no sane end. How awkward.

For instance, the government of Hong Kong, in refusing to extradite
Snowden as per the Obama administration’s request, explained in its
refusal letter that it has “formally written to the U.S. Government
requesting clarification on reports about the hacking of computer
systems in Hong Kong by U.S. government agencies. It will follow up on
the matter, to protect the legal rights of people of Hong Kong.”

In other words, sorry, Naked Empire. We’re not going to do what you
ask, and by the way, we have some issues with your behavior we’d like to
discuss.

This is not the sort of insolence the world’s only superpower wants
to hear, and it’s Snowden’s fault, along with other whistleblowers who
preceded him, some of whom, such as Bradley Manning, are enduring harsh
consequences for their truth-telling. Traitors, all of them — at least
as far as the government is concerned, because, when you strip away the
public relations mask, the primary interest of government is the
perpetuation of power. And anyone who interferes with that perpetuation,
even, or especially, in the name of principle, is a “security risk.”

Incredibly, so much of the Fourth Estate goes along with this,
aligning itself with the raw, unarticulated interests of power — with
the idea that security equals the status quo. Mainstream coverage of the
Snowden affair assumes that a crime has been committed and has no
further interest in that aspect of the story: a crime is a crime. The
unspoken assumption is that the government protects us by doing whatever
it does, and we don’t really need to know the details. We just need to
round up the transgressors and bring them to justice, because this,
rather than the upholding of some sort of principle independent of raw
power, is what constitutes the “national interest.”

Even the world’s most powerful media and Intelligence apparatus can’t always control public opinion, writes Weisbrot.

In his videotaped interview
with journalist Glenn Greenwald, Edward Snowden said that “the world’s
most powerful intelligence agencies” (like the CIA) were so formidable
that “[n]o one can meaningfully oppose them. If they want to get you,
they'll get you in time.”

That remains to be seen. On Wednesday President Obama beat a hasty
retreat from his global public relations and diplomatic, and political
campaign against Snowden. It was quite an amazing, if implicit,
admission of defeat. Here was the president of the world’s most powerful
nation, with the world’s most influential media outlets having rallied to his cause,
now quietly trying to lower the profile of an issue that his own
government had elevated to one of the biggest stories in the world.

He didn’t talk to the presidents of China or Russia, he said, because “I
shouldn't have to. This is something that routinely is dealt with
between law enforcement officials in various countries.” Except that it
has been dealt with by these other governments in the same way that
Americans deal with annoying telemarketing phone calls. Hong Kong
casually hung up on the Obama Administration’s extradition request.
President Putin provided a jovial “buzz off” response on Wednesday,
saying that Snowden was a “free man,” and with an analogy to shearing a
piglet, made it clear that he had more important things to think about
than helping an unfriendly arrogant power get its hands on a pesky
whistleblower. US Secretary of State John Kerry’s threats
that a failure to follow Washington’s directives would “have
consequences” turned out to be nothing more than bluff and bluster.

“I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,”
said Obama in response to a question as to whether he would try to force
down a plane carrying Snowden away from Russia. That was the best news
of the week for Snowden, because that scenario was quite possibly one of
his biggest obstacles to his freedom. He could conceivably get to Latin
America without flying through US air space or stopping in countries
that take orders from the United States, but what would stop the US
government from forcing his plane down almost anywhere along the way?
International law, you might say, but I can already hear the snickering
from the White House and the Pentagon.

It was a humbling episode for the POTUS and his State Department. Little Ecuador, dismissed by right-wing pundits as a “banana republic,” stood defiant and one-upped Washington’s threat to cut off its preferential access to US markets if it offered asylum to Snowden. “We don’t need no stinking trade preferences,” was the non-literal English translation.

Close Encounters of the Lower-Tech Kind

Only Martians, by now, are unaware of the phone and online data scooped up by the National Security Agency (though if it turns out that they are aware,
the NSA has surely picked up their signals and crunched their
metadata). American high-tech surveillance is not, however, the only
kind around. There’s also the lower tech, up-close-and-personal kind
that involves informers and sometimes government-instigated violence.

Just how much of this is going on and in how coordinated a way no one
out here in the spied-upon world knows. The lower-tech stuff gets
reported, if at all, only one singular, isolated event at a time -- look
over here, look over there, now you see it, now you don’t. What is
known about such surveillance as well as the suborning of illegal acts
by government agencies, including the FBI, in the name of
counterterrorism has not been put together by major news organizations
in a way that would give us an overview of the phenomenon. (The ACLU has done by far the best job of compiling reports on spying on Americans of this sort.)

Some intriguing bits about informers and agents provocateurs
briefly made it into the public spotlight when Occupy Wall Street was
riding high. But as always, dots need connecting. Here is a
preliminary attempt to sort out some patterns behind what could be the
next big story about government surveillance and provocation in America.

Two Stories from Occupy Wall StreetThe first is about surveillance. The second is about provocation.

On September 17, 2011, Plan A for the New York activists who came to
be known as Occupy Wall Street was to march to the territory outside the
bank headquarters of JPMorgan Chase. Once there, they discovered that
the block was entirely fenced in. Many activists came to believe that
the police had learned their initial destination from e-mail circulating
beforehand. Whereupon they headed for nearby Zuccotti Park and a
movement was born.

It’s 4:18 a.m. and the strip mall is deserted. But tucked in back, next
to a closed-down video store, an employment agency is already filling
up. Rosa Ramirez walks in, as she has done nearly every morning for the
past six months. She signs in and sits down in one of the 100 or so blue
plastic chairs that fill the office. Over the next three hours,
dispatchers will bark out the names of who will work today. Rosa waits,
wondering if she will make her rent.

In cities all across the country, workers stand on street corners, line
up in alleys or wait in a neon-lit beauty salon for rickety vans to
whisk them off to warehouses miles away. Some vans are so packed that to
get to work, people must squat on milk crates, sit on the laps of
passengers they do not know or sometimes lie on the floor, the other
workers’ feet on top of them.

This is not Mexico. It is not Guatemala or Honduras. This is Chicago, New Jersey, Boston.

The people here are not day laborers looking for an odd job from a
passing contractor. They are regular employees of temp agencies working
in the supply chain of many of America’s largest companies – Walmart,
Macy’s, Nike, Frito-Lay. They make our frozen pizzas, sort the recycling
from our trash, cut our vegetables and clean our imported fish. They
unload clothing and toys made overseas and pack them to fill our store
shelves. They are as important to the global economy as shipping
containers and Asian garment workers.
Many get by on minimum wage, renting rooms in rundown houses, eating
dinners of beans and potatoes, and surviving on food banks and
taxpayer-funded health care. They almost never get benefits and have
little opportunity for advancement.

Across America, temporary work has become a mainstay of the economy,
leading to the proliferation of what researchers have begun to call
“temp towns.” They are often dense Latino neighborhoods teeming with
temp agencies. Or they are cities where it has become nearly impossible
even for whites and African-Americans with vocational training to find
factory and warehouse work without first being directed to a temp firm.

In June, the Labor Department reported
that the nation had more temp workers than ever before: 2.7 million.
Overall, almost one-fifth of the total job growth since the recession
ended in mid-2009 has been in the temp sector, federal data shows. But
according to the American Staffing Association,
the temp industry’s trade group, the pool is even larger: Every year, a
tenth of all U.S. workers finds a job at a staffing agency.

The bank "should be held accountable" for
bankrolling "the most dangerous and ecologically devastating practice on
earth," says group

Andrea GermanosPublished on Friday, June 28, 2013 by Common DreamsTar Sands Blockade
pulled a prank on TD Bank on Friday in an action to highlight the bank's
support for the Keystone XL pipeline and the tar sands, which the group
described as "the most dangerous and ecologically devastating practice
on earth."

"The bank should be held accountable" Ron Seifert, a
spokesperson with Tar Sands Blockade, told Common Dreams Friday
afternoon, confirming that the group was responsible for the action.

-Tar Sands BlockadeA press release issued
Friday, purportedly from the bank, said that the institution was going
to begin selling its $1.6 billion stake in the tar sands carrying
pipeline and "other oil sands related ventures" following President
Obama's recent climate speech and "increasing controversies and economic difficulties for Alberta's oil sands." It continued:

"Divesting from Keystone XL not only makes financial sense given the
uncertainties surrounding the project, but it fits with out pledge to be
'As Green As Our Logo'," says TD Bank Environmental Director Diana
Glassman."The short term dictates of the market and the concerns of our
shareholders are of course the primary motivation behind the move away
from oil sands, but thankfully, doing so will serve to protect other
investments in the long term." says TD Chief Economist Craig Alexander,
"Climate change is bad for business and economic stability in general,
and the scientific community has been very clear about the climate
change impacts of Alberta's oil sands."

The release was sent out and posted to yourtdbank.com, a site that appears to mirror the actual tdbank.com site.

Obviously getting some attention—perhaps including some praise for
the recognizing the climate change impacts of the tar sands—TD Bank
tweeted this morning:

From Truth Dig: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_limited_reach_of_the_supreme_courts_gay_marriage_rulings_20130627/By Bill BlumJun 27, 2013From
Greenwich Village in New York to West Hollywood and the Castro District
in California, the LGBT community is celebrating, and for good reason.
In two landmark rulings handed down Wednesday, the Supreme Court
overturned a key section of the Defense of Marriage Act in the case of United States v. Windsor and paved the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California in Hollingsworth v. Perry.But
as the parades, rallies and public displays of pure giddiness wind
down, let’s hope that a more sobering realization sets in that despite
Wednesday’s triumphs, the court’s decisions fall far short of
establishing marriage equality as a federal constitutional right. The
decisions may have advanced the ball significantly in that direction,
but they were, in fact, narrow and bitterly divided 5-4 rulings issued
by a deeply conservative tribunal that erect stiff barriers to further
progress, both for the cause of marriage equality and the broader goals
of social justice extending beyond the issue.How proponents of
marriage equality and progressives generally proceed from this point
depends on understanding exactly what Wednesday’s decisions said and
didn’t say. To do that, we must look beyond the headlines.Of the
two rulings, Windsor has the wider nationwide application. Authored by
Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by the court’s four liberals, the
majority opinion held that Section 3 of DOMA, which defines marriage for
purposes of more than a thousand federal laws and benefit programs as
the union of one man and one woman, violated the basic principles of due
process and equal protection of the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth
Amendment. In heartfelt prose that spoke of the sanctity and dignity of
same-sex unions, Kennedy reasoned that the section’s only purpose was to
impose a “separate status and so a stigma” upon same-sex couples, and
that such purpose was unconstitutional.Threaded within Kennedy’s
heartfelt prose, however, was a narrative of states-rights and
old-fashioned federalism, whereby he and the majority recognized that
with few constitutional exceptions (pertaining, for example, to
now-defunct state laws prohibiting interracial unions), the definition
of marriage is by historical tradition and the weight of constitutional
law left to the states. The majority opinion did not alter that
tradition with regard to gay marriage. To the contrary, the opinion ends
with the stark admonition that “its holding [is] confined to those
lawful marriages” in states that have opted to recognize same-sex
unions.Continue reading at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_limited_reach_of_the_supreme_courts_gay_marriage_rulings_20130627/

NEW HAVEN — THE Supreme Court’s soaring decision to strike down
the core of the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional is a civil
rights landmark, but the history leading up to it is poorly understood.
Marriage equality was neither inevitable nor, until recently, even
conceivable. And the struggle for it was not, as is commonly believed, a
natural consequence of the gay liberation movement that gained steam in
the late 1960s.

It was not until the 1980s that securing legal recognition for same-sex
relationships became an urgent concern of lesbians and gay men. Decades
earlier, such recognition was almost unimaginable. In the 1950s, most
states criminalized gay people’s sexual intimacy. Newspaper headlines
blared the State Department’s purge of homosexual employees during the
McCarthy-era “lavender scare.” Police cracked down on lesbian and gay
bars and other alleged “breeding grounds” of homosexuality.

The lesbian and gay liberation movements of the early 1970s did not make
marriage a priority — quite the opposite. Activists fought police
raids, job discrimination and families’ rejection of their queer
children. Most radical activists scorned the very idea of marriage. But a
handful walked into clerks’ offices across the country to request
marriage licenses. State officials suddenly realized that their laws
failed to limit marriage to a man and a woman; no other arrangement had
been imagined. By 1978, 15 states had written this limitation into law.

A “traditional family values” movement arose to oppose gay rights and
feminism. Anita Bryant and other activists took aim at some of the
earliest local anti-discrimination laws, and by 1979 they had persuaded
voters in several cities to repeal them. Subsequently, in more than 100
state and local referendums, gay-rights activists had to defend hard-won
protections. This, not marriage, consumed much of their energy.

It was the ’80s that changed things. The AIDS epidemic and what came to
be known as the “lesbian baby boom” compelled even those couples whose
friends and family fully embraced them to deal with powerful
institutions — family and probate courts, hospitals, adoption agencies
and funeral homes — that treated them as legal strangers.

Hospitals could deny the gay partner of someone with AIDS visitation
privileges, not to mention consultation over treatment. He couldn’t use
his health insurance to cover his partner. He risked losing his home
after his partner died, if his name wasn’t on the lease or if he
couldn’t pay inheritance taxes on his partner’s share (which would not
have been required of a surviving spouse).

When two women shared parenting and the biological mother died, the
courts often felt obliged to grant custody to her legal next of kin —
even if the child wished to remain with the nonbiological mother. If the
women separated, the biological mother could unilaterally deny her ex
the right to see their children.

There is an old saying that Texas is “heaven for men and dogs, but hell
for women and oxen.” But the state’s history is chock-full of stories of
female role models. Barbara Jordan. Ann Richards. In downtown Austin,
there’s a statue of Angelina Eberly, heroine of the Texas Archives War
of 1842, firing a cannon and looking about 7 feet tall.

I do not have nearly enough time to explain to you about the Archives
War, although it’s an extremely interesting story. Right now we need to
move on to State Senator Wendy Davis, whose 11-hour filibuster this week
turned her into a national name brand.

“It was like a made-for-TV movie. I’ve been around the block, but I’ve
never seen anything like this,” said Cecile Richards, the president of
Planned Parenthood and the daughter of the former governor.

Texas is a state with one of the nation’s highest teenage motherhood
rates, where a majority of women who give birth are poor enough to
qualify for Medicaid. So, naturally, its political leaders have declared
war against the right of women to choose whether or not they want to be
pregnant. Funding for family planning has been slashed. This month,
Gov. Rick Perry tried to pass a new law that would have shut down almost
all the abortion clinics in the state, under the guise of expanded
health and safety requirements.

Huge crowds showed up to protest! This was pretty remarkable because
Texas is not currently known as a place where people pay intense
attention to what goes on in its State Capitol. (A recent study at the
University of Texas at Austin found that it has “one of the nation’s
lowest political and civic participation rates.”) Also, the conventional
wisdom is that when things get politically rowdy, it’s because of a
visitation from the right.

The filibustering pro-choice Texas state senator is helping turn her state blue. Ann Richards is smiling

After much confusion, the Statesman reports that Lt. Gov. David
Dewhurst announced on the Senate floor at 3:01 a.m that the bill had, in
fact, not passed.

Original post:

In
a better world, the discussion of sonograms would not be at all germane
to proposed new antiabortion legislation, because the two issues would
have nothing to do with one another. But since Texas, like many other
states, recently passed a requirement that women get a sonogram before
obtaining an abortion, it made perfect sense that state Sen. Wendy Davis
would talk about the way SB 5, the state’s proposed new abortion
restrictions, might relate to the earlier sonogram law.

Davis was
11 hours into an effort to filibuster that draconian antiabortion
legislation when she turned to its relationship with the sonogram law,
and Republican Sen. Donna Campbell stood up and claimed the Democrat’s
sonogram discussion wasn’t germane to the legislation Davis was
filibustering. If Campbell was right, that was Davis’ third “strike” – a
violation of Senate rules that would end the filibuster. After a long
break, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst agreed that Davis’ discussion of the
sonogram law wasn’t germane to the abortion law debate, and moved to end
the filibuster. There followed amazing parliamentary wrangling that had
Roberts Rules of Order trending on Twitter in some areas, but in the
end, the Senate seemed to pass SB 5 in a shady way (more on that later)
that will make an already suspect, poorly written bill even more likely
to be overturned by the courts.

That outcome aside: Wendy Davis is a badass.

The
funny, feisty state senator is already a star on the national feminist
circuit. Raised by a single mother, Davis herself became a single mom at
19. She started out at Tarrant Community College, went on to Texas
Christian University and got her law degree from Harvard. She moved from
the Fort Worth City Council to the Texas House to the Senate with
impressive momentum. This isn’t her first filibuster: In 2011 she
filibustered $4 billion in education cuts, making Gov. Rick Perry call a
special session to push them through anyway. I got to meet her when I
last visited Texas, as a guest of the wonderful feminist group Annie’s
List, and everyone I talked to thought she’d get to be Texas governor
someday – at least governor. Alongside the Castro brothers, Mayor Julian
and congressman Joaquin, she’s one of the best reasons why Texas will
turn blue in our lifetimes.

On Tuesday night, 180,000 people tuned in to watch Wendy Davis' filibuster on Senate Bill 5
in Texas. The bill proposed closing all but five abortion clinics in
Texas, including all of those in the poorest, most rural regions, and
would have banned abortions after 20 weeks.

It was an issue that affected thousands in Texas, and more, across
the nation, as women's reproductive rights continue to be debated. So it
wasn't surprising that 180,000 people wanted to witness the outcome of
Davis' filibuster which began at 11:18 AM and lasted more than 11 hours.

But where did these people watch the proceedings? Not on CNN, or
MSNBC or even FOX News. None of those - or any mainstream media channel -
was talking about it. Instead, these people flocked to a YouTube livestream hosted by the Texas Senate.

Without a news station commentary, viewers took to popular social
media sites like Twitter to create their own dialogue using the hashtag
#standwithwendy. The final minute before the crucial midnight deadline
resulted in 4,900 tweets a minute, which was 4,900 more tweets than from any mainstream media source.The political jargon used on the floor could be confusing to many.
Without a journalist explaining what some of the rules, regulations and
terms were, many viewers became confused. In fact, confusion was so
rampant that even Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D-Laredo) asked for
clarification.

Fortunately, both people outside the Texas Senate building and those
watching from their homes used social media to disseminate information
about what was happening to help other viewers understand everything
from what Robert's Rules were to why so many parliamentary inquiries
were occurring. It was truly an example of citizen journalism at its
finest.

The mainstream media and their investigative journalists failed again
when chaos erupted in the final minutes of the filibuster. A vote was
called for and questions arose regarding when, exactly, it was taken.
Some claimed it happened before the midnight deadline while others said
it took place after 12 AM. It was then when Americans and those watching
internationally most needed someone to step in and find the answers.
But the media stayed quiet on the subject, with large media outlets such
as the Associated Press preferring to report on Channing Tatum and his new baby and CNN hosting a segment on the caloric dangers of muffins.

About Me

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson